School Mobility Puts Kids At Risk Of Low Achievement

By Dr. Marciene Mattleman

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- It's been shown that many factors affect school achievement -- hearing and visual problems, poor nutrition, education level of parents among them.  Another issue especially in cities like Philadelphia is school mobility, critical in places with high poverty.

New York University researchers tracked 381 low-income, predominately ethnic minority students in the Chicago School Readiness Project from Head Start through 4th grade. They found that only 54 children or 14 percent remained in the same school throughout that time, while 327, or 86 percent changed schools at least once and 40 children switched schools three or more times during the study.

The more often students changed schools, the worse they performed on 4th grade standardized math tests and 3rd grade teacher observations of students' critical thinking skills. Read more details on Student Mobility in Report Roundup, Education Week, October 14th.